Covenant Book Club

New Books- First of 2012

2012-01-23T17:38:00.000-08:00

We had a great meeting to discuss Pride and Prejudice. That certainly opened a new venue for my reading. I am actually considering reading more Austen books and might even watch a movie or two.

For next month we picked two more books.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

http://www.amazon.com/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327367759&sr=1-1

A new biography about one of the first to speak out against Hitler.

This will be the book we discuss at the next meeting.

Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time by Michael Perry

http://www.amazon.com/Population-485--Meeting-Neighbors-Siren/dp/0061363502/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327368498&sr=1-1

Biography of a Volunteer Fireman in snippets surrounding fire calls.

This will be the book we discuss on the website.

We also agreed to read the Princess Bride for the meeting after next but we haven't decided what the second book would be just yet.

Book Club Tomorrow Night

2012-01-15T13:49:00.000-08:00

Are you ready to discuss Pride and Prejudice? We start up at 7PM tomorrow. Check out some of the links Ihave on the right had side as well.

See you there.

Walking in the Will of God

2011-12-12T03:46:00.000-08:00

Interesting so far. Walking in the Will of God depends a lot more on who GOD is than what we are doing or have done. Has anyone else gotten to read some of Steve McVey's book? I have read about a quarter of it and like it so far, but it fits nicely with a lot of what I already think, so I was wondering if there might be dissenting opinions out there or even if you might agree with me.

Pride and Prejudice

2011-12-01T15:55:00.001-08:00

I have made it about 40% through the book and I am surprised to say that I am enjoying it. I hope everyone else is getting a chance to read it as well. I am finding that Jane Austen's writing style keeps the reading very interesting and the humor in most of it is caught even with the older english writing style. It seems to keep my mind engaged throughout the story. Is anyone else finding it a good read or even a bad read?

Next Books

2011-11-22T03:51:00.001-08:00

Two new books again. Gives us a lot to talk about and hopefully will get some discussion out here on the blog.

The book we will discuss at the next meeting is a real stretch, at least for me, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. We have not tried a romance yet and so I thought lets go with a classic and expand the horizons.

The book to discuss online here on the blog is Walking in the Will of God by Steve McVey. This may be stretching in content but isn't as much a stretch in reading material. I am looking forward to it and hope you will join me in reading it.

I have not read either book before and I think there may be a few like me out there although I think some of our number may have read Pride and Prejudice before and maybe they can interject some things to help the rest of us understand it better.

Feel free to post comments.

The books can be found on Amazon here:
Pride and Prejudice (The kindle edition is free)

Walking in the Will of God

Keep looking for new links on the right hand side of the site.

Another Great One... From 4 to Infinity and Beyond

2011-11-22T03:38:00.001-08:00

Another great night of discussion going over the book Here's Looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos. Education methods to neat tricks to synesthesia (you need to look that up) to the sum of human knowledge the topics ranged. I am certain that if we all didn't need to get home we would have solved the budget crisis as well but time sent us away. We all seemed to enjoy the book by Mr. Bellos. I will be posting some links on the site to visit that are related to math and Alex Bellos to review. Much of his proofs and background can be found on his site. Let me know if you read the book or even have some math tips or sites of interest.

God Bless

Generous Justice

2011-10-26T04:28:00.000-07:00

That was a great book. I must admit that I started off thinking that he is really going around in circles to prove a point that would have been easier to take on directly. What I found though was that he was not so much making a point as trying to get people to think, discuss and maybe even change.

His tying justice and righteousness to disadvantaging one's self for the advantage of the community was brilliant and his examples were very insightful. Weaving one's life into the fabric of a society that has broken down and people are falling through the cracks was an amazing picture of what he was trying to say.

I would say that his list of notes and references at the end were almost as impressive as his discourse.

So what did everyone else think?

2- yes I said 2- books this time

2011-10-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Breaking with tradition or possibly starting a new one- we have decided to go through 2 books this time. This was brought on by the prolific readers that we have in the group. We will comment on 1 at the club meeting in November while the other we will go over with the blog.

The book that we will discuss at the meeting will be...
Here's Looking at Euclid"
A book about the beauty of math. I am hoping to inspire some of our literal "rocket scientists" to come out and visit with us.

The book we will comment on in the blog is...
Generous Justice
An intriguing look into what exactly justice means and what Jesus has asked us to do as Christians.

Please comment and follow us here. If you have any questions about following please let me know. If you have a gooogle account you can use that immediately to login.

2011-09-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

Can't wait. Book Club tomorrow. Lets talk about the Elements.

Another Interesting Book about the Elements

2011-09-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is book for children and is part of a series on chemistry.
The Periodic Table- Elements with Style by Simon Basher

http://www.adriandingleschemistrypages.com/

Ptable

2011-07-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

An interactive Table no less.

PtTable

Table of Elements on the Web

2011-07-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here is a site that has history and news of the Table of Elements.

Webelements: The Periodic Table on the Web

New Book

2011-07-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

Well its time to start on a new book. We agreed on Monday that the next book would be scientific but in a readable fashion. We whittled down from 3 books to the one we picked:
"The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements" by Sam Kean.

Just in case you are interested the others we looked at were:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math

We will be having the next meeting on September 19th at the same bat time (7pm). Have fun reading and I look forward to talking with you about it.

Another Book by Donald Miller

2011-07-16T18:38:00.000-07:00

I also read "Searching for God Knows What". This was fantastic to read especially if you would like to think about why we do certain things and how they fit into what Jesus really said. Powerful ties to relationship while distancing from "right" and "wrong" answers. Definitely challenges you to think about what following Jesus really means and if living for Jesus is exactly the point when we could live with Jesus. Or is there a destination or instead a person that is the goal, Jesus? I would highly recommend it as a good read.

Looking for God Knows What

2011-07-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

I am reading another book by Donald Miller and I think I am even more impressed by this one.

Book List

2011-06-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

Books we have read thus far:
The Shack by William P. Young
Blessed Child by Ted Dekker
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Abraham Lincoln by James McPherson
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity by Bill Gilham
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
What's So Amazing About Grace by Phillip Yancey
Son of Hamas by Mosab Hasan Yousef
The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani
The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Mannning
Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron and Denver Moore
Moongate by William Proctor
The Hound of the Bsskerville's by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

We haven't talked about Blue Like Jazz yet, but it will be the 15th book in the Book Club. Its hard to imagine that we have gone through that many books. I have been bery blessed in that I struggled to read the book we needed to at the start and now I am reading more than a book a month and much in addition for work or magazines/ artilcles that interest me. I hope everyone else is being blessed by the group.

Blue Like Jazz

2011-06-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

We are currently going through Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I went ahead and got the 3 in 1 book from Amazon with Searching for God Knows What and Through Painted Deserts along with Blue Like Jazz. So far I have loved what I have read.

Here is the wikipedia article on Blue Like Jazz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Like_Jazz

Also here is the link to Amazon's books for Blue Like Jazz
Blue Like Jazz
And the 3 in 1 Donald Miller
3 in 1

Starting up again

2011-06-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not posting for quite some time. But I wanted to start posting again since this is a great place to put some related links and allow commentary on the books that we are reading. I will be posting the name of the book we are currently reading and will post the list of books we have read. Feel free to comment on the book we are reading or even the ones we have read in the past.

MoonGate, Starting Up?

2011-04-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

I saw this article about the Chinese Space Station and thought it was interesting after reading MoonGate by William Proctor. Helium3.... HMMMMM...

Chinese Space Station in Fast Company

Next Book (What's So Amazing About Grace)

2010-03-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

We will be reading the book "What's so Amazing About Grace" by Phillip Yancey. I have begun reading it and am pretty excited about our discussions in May. Don't forget that I need to you to post your suggestions for books for the next month.
I know that I heard Son of Hamas and Same Kind of Different as Me. Please feel free to post your suggestions and any selling points you have.

New Book by Mitch Albom

2010-03-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com: Have a Little Faith: A True Story (9780786868728): Mitch Albom: Books

Amazon.com: Have a Little Faith: A True Story (9780786868728): Mitch Albom: Books

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

2010-01-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

You can find the book on Amazon at this link
Five People You Meet in Heaven

Please write what you think as comments here.

New Books

2010-01-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

We decided on not just the next book but the book after that one as well last night.

Our next book will be "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom. This is a story of a man who meets up with people after death in Heaven and the surprising way he interacts with them and even who they are. Please join us in reading and meeting with us as we go through the book. Feel free to comment on the book here on the blog as you read. Our next meeting will be at the church on March the 15th at 7:00 PM.

The book following will be "What's so Amazing About Grace" by Phillip Yancey. I think the title pretty much sums this one up. Phillip Yancey is always an uplifting read and should spawn many a topic at our discussion. Again please feel free to comment here on the site as you read.

Great night of discussion

2010-01-19T18:18:00.000-08:00

We had a great discussion last night about What GOD Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity. Interspersed throughout we also got some fantastic life stories that showed how GOD can make it very apparent who's you are and how special He has made you to be. Most agreed with the authors points with some pointed exceptions. Overall the book was a blessing to read although it was difficult to get through. Bill Gilham beat home the points that Christ is the Christians life and that our identity changed at the cross to saint from sinner. He urged us to "life out" our true identity as saint and not listen to the lie that we are sinners.

Please feel free to comment on what you took from the book here.

Book Club Tonight

2010-01-18T14:54:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the night. We get to discuss What GOD Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity by Bill Gilham. I hope to see many of you there

Great Meeting and a New Book

2009-11-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

We had a great meeting last night and a great discussion during this. Thanks to the Pastors that allow for discussions that range far and wide and sometimes don't have pretty packages or neat endings. Please use the links that I have posted to the right to find more on Frederick Douglass and even discover some of his other writings. He is a very inspirational person in not only his success but in his demeanor and grace in action.

The next book for the book club was decided after much discussion and the lot fell to What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity by Bill Gilham. We hope to see you there next time to discuss this book. It might be a real eye opener to all who read it and the discussion of its concepts are bound to be very uplilfiting. We will meet next on January 18th at 7PM for a the discussion of the book. See you there.

Frederick Douglass

2009-11-15T17:46:00.000-08:00

Sorry I waited so long to post. I have been occupied with working on retreats and have neglected my job here. We get to go over The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass tomorrow night when we meet. I must admit that this is a difficult book to read through, but not because of its length. Sometimes it is hard to imagine how wicked we as humans can act towards others but history shows us that we are capable of this and have shown a propensity to do so.
I know this was not meant to be a Bible Study but this certainly is a good representation of how sin can enslave us all even those who think they are the ones in control. I hope everyone got to read the appendix that Mr. Douglass added to the book later.

God Bless,
See you tomorrow.
Bill

Great Meeting and a New Book

2009-09-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

We had some great discussions and as you might think a discussion of Abraham Lincoln would do, they branched into many areas. I hope the additional links provided were of use and interesting to you. I will add to them but not remove the existing so feel free to continue using them.

Our next book was picked tonight and it is in the same vein as this but instead of a biography it is an autobiography. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave" This can be found online
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/

New Relevant Links

2009-09-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

I have just added some relevant links to the side of the blog. These are all related to Abraham Lincoln. Feel free to share any links you come across that are related to any of the books we have read or even book clubs in general.

Next Book

2009-07-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

We had a great meeting on the 20th to discuss The Tipping Point. I hope those who couldn't attend and even those who did would comment here on the book and their take on the points.

In addition we picked another book, Abraham Lincoln by noted historian James McPherson. The book can be found on Amazon here but I am sure that you can find it in the bookstore and maybe soon in the libraray.

5 days until the next meeting

2009-07-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

I think this one will have a lot of good discussion. Can't wait to see everyone there. God Bless.

Book Lists

2009-05-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

In the interest of promoting reading and expanding our horizons we decided that we would list some of the books that we liked and some that we would be interested in reading. In order to get you thinking I thought I would give you a list of genres that we came up with so we can see how many different genres we could address in our lists.

The genres we came up with were:
History
Historical Fiction
Biographical
Sci Fi/ Fantasy
Western
Romance
Thriller/ Mystery
Inspirational/ Self-Help
Comedy
Political
and just to include it Comic Books (Graphic Novels to make it sound a little better)

Please add your list as a comment to this post.

Third Book

2009-05-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

After a great meeting hosted by Jon and Beth Crow we decided that our next book will be from a different genre. This will be an informational book on trends. Malcolm Gladwell's book titled The Tipping Point. The next meeting is scheduled for July 20th.

Second Book

2009-03-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

Now we know what the second book is:
Blessed Child by Ted Dekker and Bill Bright.
The next meeting will be at the church and once the theme is set the host will let us know what we can bring to the club.

First Meeting- What a Blast

2009-03-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

That was fantastic. 13 people all talking about the Shack and the occasional tangent. We had different opinions wanted different answers and we were still gracious. I want to especially thank Pastor Mike who not only encouraged but brought it up and got it going. Thanks also to Pastor Danny who is always supportive of fellowship in love even if it is out of the box. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as well and I am excited about meeting again.

9 days til the first book club with a book

2009-03-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone got a chance to get the book and read it. I have spoken to some at church who have read it and I look forward to going over it at the club. I do want you to think about whether you would like to host the next club (still would be at Covenant) and pick a book on the 16th that we can read over the course of the next two months. Then host the event and lead the discussion.

First Book - The Shack

2009-01-19T18:22:00.000-08:00

The first book will be "The Shack". I have this post here to allow for comments if so desired. Please be charitable and respectful in all comments.

Some Decisions

2009-01-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

For going ahead these were the decisions that we made tonight.

We will meet at the church every 2 months on the third monday of the month.
I will be the host for the first book discussion and we will pick someone to host the next discussion at the march meeting. The host will pick the book and be responsible for the theme, discussion and refreshments (doesn't mean that they can't have help with this).

For the March meeting we will be reading "The Shack" by William P. Young which can be found on Amazon at The Shack
This is a challenging book and will require us to remember the tenets from the first post. I think everyone who reads along with us will enjoy the book and get a lot out of it. I will be posting a holder for The Shack so that comments can be added if desired.

Book Club Start

2009-01-18T03:48:00.000-08:00

This is the first post for the new Covenenant Book Club. As of now we have not made the decisions that will determine the shape of the book club, we haven't even met the first time. The definition of the book club will be decided by the answer to a few questions:

1. How often will we meet?
2. How will we pick the books that we read?
3. Who will host the book club each meeting?
4. Where will we meet?

Once these are decided we can then lay down some guidelines that will be important as the club progresses. I think foremost is that we must remember that we are a Christian book club and we should pick the books based on that understanding. This does not mean that all the books must be written by Chuck Swindoll or Max Lucado, but we should not pick books that are racy or inflammatory or indecent (I know tough to define at times). Another guideline is that we need to exercise grace in our discussions at all times. Differing opinions are why you have book clubs in the first place, if you all think the same thing then the book club is unnecessary. And the last that I will list here is that we need to be open to sharing our own personal experiences with the rest of the club as it relates to our discussions of the books.

I am looking forward to the start and I know we will all have a good time doing this. God Bless You brothers and sisters.